IN A NUTSHELL:They’re as sharp as they should be in dry, jagged moondust in a vacuum, which behaves quite differently than weathered sand in Earth’s atmosphere.

THE DETAILS: In NASA Mooned America!, Ralph Rene claims that “clear tracks in deep dust require moisture; otherwise they form only indistinct depressions [...] There can be no moisture on the Moon [...] And yet, every picture allegedly taken on the Moon shows clear footprints” (page 7). In other words, sharply outlined bootprints such as the famous one shown in Figure 8-18 are said to be impossible on the Moon.

Proponents of this claim, however, fail to consider that sand on Earth is exposed to very different conditions than dust on the Moon. First of all, on Earth, the wind, the flow of water and other natural phenomena move and churn the grains of sand against each other constantly, smoothing their surfaces and reducing their friction. On the Moon this smoothing doesn’t occur, and therefore the grains of lunar “sand” (termed regolith in geological jargon) are sharp-edged and uneven. Accordingly, they tend to lock together and stick to each other far more than Earth sand, much like a stack of smooth river stones will collapse easily while a similar pile of jagged rocks will keep its shape. This leads to higher cohesion and sharper footprints.

Figure 8-18. A footprint left on the Moon by Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11). Detail of photo AS11-40-5877.

Then there’s gravity, which is one sixth of the Earth’s. Stacked moondust particles are pulled down by weaker forces than on our planet and therefore the edges of footprints, for example, hold their shape more easily.

Finally, there’s electrostatic attraction. Lunar regolith has a considerable electrostatic charge and therefore its grains tend to cling to each other more than ordinary Earth sand, in the same way that dust clings to an electrostatically charged glass surface, such as an old-style (CRT) television screen.*

The sharpness of prints in moondust is confirmed by the Russian uncrewed rovers of the Lunokhod series, which landed on the Moon and sent back pictures of their finely detailed wheel tracks (Figure 8-19).

Figure 8-19. Sharp-edged wheel tracks left on the Moon by Soviet Lunokhod 1 in 1970.

In 2008, the Mythbusters TV show placed a sample of powdery material, geologically equivalent to lunar regolith, in a vacuum chamber and then pressed a footprint into it, using a replica of an Apollo Moon boot. The result closely resembled the sharp-edged footprints seen in Apollo photographs, despite the higher gravity and the lack of any significant electrostatic charge.